Australian Hearing Hub Open House

To celebrate Hearing Awareness Week, the partner organisations of the Australian Hearing Hub (AHH) hosted an open house event on Saturday 23 August.

Hon. Jillian Skinner MP

The event was opened by distinguished guest The Hon. Jillian Skinner MP. She explained that “it is important to host community events to raise awareness of hearing health.” She went on to say “The Australian Hearing Hub is a great example of collaboration. It brings together experts in hearing to work together to positively impact people’s lives.” The formal proceedings also included a welcome from Professor Janet Greeley and an address by Professor Harvey Dillon, Director of National Acoustic Laboratories.

Professor Dillon said “that the Australian Hearing Hub in particular, and Macquarie University in general, has all the disciplines and expertise necessary to investigate how we can make sure that hearing loss never gets in the way of children achieving normal language ability and so life opportunities.”

In the formal welcome proceedings, two clients from Australian Hearing also told their personal stories of growing up with hearing loss to the audience.

The Australian Hearing Hub Open House event attracted nearly 300 people. The event provided opportunities for free hearing tests for children in the Macquarie University Speech and Hearing Clinic and adult hearing screening through Australian Hearing. During the event a total of 100 free hearing tests/screenings were completed.

The tours of the anechoic chamber and MQ photonics laser micromachining demonstrations were very popular with over 120 people signing up to have the opportunity to see both state of the art facilities in action.

Children had fun on the jumping castle, face painting and also doing arts and crafts with the Centre for Emotional Health and The Shepherd Centre.